With the proliferation of technology and travel in our lives, maps displayed on electronic displays are becoming a common tool in our lives, such as in connection with travel.
For example, the map application “Google Map” allows a user to specify locations of a travel itinerary, and in response to the entered locations, the application provides driving directions as well as a map display that includes the specified locations. Such map display also shows a graphical indication of the proposed route corresponding to the driving directions. Thus, the user can obtain a high level graphical view of the proposed route. An example of such a map display is shown in FIG. 10.
In addition, in the current era of mass consumption, map displays are commonly used to show consumers where they can acquire desired goods and/or services. Such examples of map display technology are proposed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,379,811 and 7,373,246, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in order to more fully describe the state of the art as known to those skilled therein as of the date of the invention described herein.
In addition, use of a geographical information system (GIS) for collecting location-associated information is becoming more common, such as in connection with surveys of land and other real estate, road repairs, fire and other disasters, etc. As such information is collected, location information, such as generated by a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, is associated with the collected information. Examples of such systems are proposed in commonly-owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,539,411, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Further, such a system may be coupled to a digital camera which is configured such that pictures captured by the digital camera at a survey site can be uploaded to the GIS and can be associated with other data stored in the GIS in connection with the survey site, to establish a relation between pictures taken by the digital camera and the location information stored in the GIS. Examples of such systems are proposed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,506,644, 5,913,078, 6,160,964, 6,999,112, 7,145,597 and 7,242,791 and U.S. patent application Publications Nos. US 2002/0191087 A1, US 2003/0081126 A1, US 2003/0185549 A1, US 2004/0174434 A1 and US 2006/0110154 A1, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in order to more fully describe the state of the art as known to those skilled therein as of the date of the invention described herein.
While a map display is typically an integral component of a GIS system, the map display in a conventional GIS system typically has a set scale that is predetermined or preset (for example, based on stored user settings). However, such a map display based on a predetermined or preset scale inevitably leads the user to perform multiple iterations of zoom in, zoom out, pan, etc., in order to obtain the map view desired by the user.